21 júla, 2010

Mark Ashton - On My Way to Heaven

Mark Ashton wrote a little book called "On My Way to Heaven". Mark Ashton was diagnosed with gallbladder cancer and he knew it was terminal a year before he died. Before he died he wrote this book where he talks of the significance of Jesus' resurrection that happened 2 000 years ago for the people living in 21st century. It is a very small book (took me one lunch to read it all) and quite encouraging. You can read it for free here: On My Way to Heaven. However, I want to share with you one of the last things he says in the book:

We all die as great sinners saved by the great grace of a far greater God. Funeral eulogies rarely present an honest picture of a person’s life. The good is magnified, the bad excluded. But when Christians are remembered as they really were: including their failures and follies, their bad moods and intolerance, their moments of harshness and unkindness, then Christ is made more glorious. For he is the one who has saved us despite our sin; who has loved us even in our weakness. Our salvation is not the record of our deeds on earth, but the intervening action of a loving God, who has saved us despite who we are and what we’ve done. And, if he can save us, then he can save anyone!

That is why it is so important to be realistic and to be biblical about death. In dying, I want to say to those I have loved and to those who have loved me: ‘Don’t magnify me — remember the reality: I was someone who sometimes got you cross, and irritated you, and let you down, and disappointed you, and hurt you. So please don’t remember an imaginary relationship with me. It was good, but it could have been better. I loved you, but I could have loved you better — just as you loved me, but you could have loved me better. So don’t let’s trust in our love for one another. Let’s trust in God’s love for us, so that the change in our relationship which my death will bring can strengthen each of our relationships with Jesus’.